The good news: I am officially a marathoner!!! I finished the race and didn't get swept. And the entire thing was COMPLETELY PAIN FREE!!! This is unbelievably huge to me. One year ago, I had JUST gotten out of my walking boot and was having setback after setback in my stress reaction recovery, and yesterday I managed 26.2 pain free miles! And I didn't quit, or even think about quitting, when it got really REALLY hard.
The bad news: It was legitimately the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. I had to dig so deep from mile 16 on to keep myself moving. And even though I tried really hard to not set any expectations for myself for my time (aside from not getting swept), I secretly had my heart set on less than 5:30. I finished in 5:55:29. I think there were a lot of reasons for this:
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Pacing. This is by far the biggest factor. I went out WAY too hard on the first half. I was really lacking confidence after my last long run cut it so close to the minimum pace requirement. I've heard a hundred times that trying to bank time is an awful idea, but somehow convinced myself that I needed to anyway. This course is really hard for even experienced runners to run even splits (much less negative splits) because the first half is almost entirely a gradual downhill, while miles 20-24 are straight up hill. It didn't help that literally all of the pace group leaders did the same thing. The 5:00 pace group leader said their goal for the first half was a 10:45/mile pace to bank time for the big hill. So I got it in my head that the farther I could get ahead in the first half the better. And it backfired. I was within about 2 minutes of a half marathon PR for the first half, and then completely tanked. I would have been much better off keeping a consistent 13:00/mile pace the entire race, but was just so afraid of the sweep bus (and for good reason... according to others in the Facebook group for first timers of this particular race, the sweep bus was actually ahead of the cutoff pace during the first half of the race).
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Training. I missed several runs during my training, including an entire week when I tripped and fell on a run and banged up my knee and hands/wrists and had to give myself some time to recover. While I got all of my long runs in, I missed an important step-back week (between my 18 miler and 21 miler) about a month before the race, and missed a few of my mid-distance runs here and there when life got in the way.
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Nutrition. I actually think this is more a routine issue than a nutrition issue. I realized AT the start line that I FORGOT TO EAT BREAKFAST. Luckily I got there over an hour early and there was a Starbucks a block away. I was able to get a bagel, but they didn't have peanut butter (bagel with PB or toast with PB is my usual long run breakfast). Would two tablespoons of peanut butter really have made that big of a difference? Probably not, but it was enough to stress me off and throw me off my game early on, which I think contributed to the anxiety, which contributed to the pacing issues.
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Heat. A minor factor, but I discovered this training cycle that I am very sensitive to warm weather. It was around 62 degrees and very sunny when I finished, which felt HOT. It made the last few miles a lot tougher than if I had been there a couple of hours earlier.
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Portapotty lines. I still have a lot of trouble balancing being dehydrated vs overhydrated. Here I erred on the side of overhydrated, which meant I needed to go to the bathroom a LOT. I made two very costly portapotty stops on the way, I'd estimate about 10 total minutes. Not only did they add time to the clock, I could feel how stiff my legs got while standing there not moving much in line.
I'm already excited to do another marathon, but in the future will definitely pick one with a longer cutoff time. Both because I think it will give me more confidence to pace myself appropriately without the fear of the bus, and because I now realize that the Twin Cities Marathon is just not a great race for newbies or slower runners. There were a ton of disappointments related to the back-of-the-pack experience (no finish line photos, no food or Gatorade left at the finish line except for bags of chips, no entertainment or crowd support for the second half of the course and the toughest hill, etc., and semi-related, no women's plus sized official race merchandise at the expo.) I'm very much of the opinion that the last runner to cross the finish line should get the same treatment from the race management as the speedier runners do. They obviously can't control the spectators, but I needed a banana and a Gatorade at the end of that race just as much as the 3 hour marathoners did, and I'm super bummed that I won't have a photo to commemorate the experience because the official race photographer bailed 30+ minutes before the finish line officially closed.
Sorry this became a rant! As disappointed as I am in the experience, I'm still extremely proud of what I accomplished. I don't have any more big races on the schedule, but I'm looking forward to deciding what my next one will be.